Oakham man challenges ITV to represent Rutland on Central weather map

A semi-retired businessman is hoping to persuade a television company to change its mind and represent England’s smallest county on its regional weather map.

Martin Ball has challenged ITV Central about the absence of any Rutland place names on its weather map.

Martin, who has lived in Oakham for 30 years, contacted the channel asking why there was ‘nothing to indicate that Rutland even existed’, while Northamptonshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, and Leicestershire were all represented by towns and cities, as well as Peterborough.

After hearing nothing back, Martin sent a mock-up of their weather map featuring an additional place marker for Oakham.

The channel thought it overcrowded the map and offered to give Oakham and Rutland a ‘special mention’ in a weather report the following week.

But Martin was not satisfied and repeated his request for permanent representation on the map.

“There is no representation at all for the 39,697 people who live in Rutland,” he said.

“This contrasts to ITV showing a second town in Lincolnshire, Spalding, which only has a population of 34,113.”

He suggested Spalding could be removed to make room, while pointing out that Oakham was already included on the BBC East Midlands weather map.

“The issue is one of county representation which is somewhat different to the numerous requests they undoubtedly get from people asking for their particular town to be included on the map,” Martin said.

“I also wonder why ITV Central includes Lincoln, Spalding, Peterborough and Northampton on their weather map because I suspect viewers in those regions generally receive their local news and weather from different ITV regions.”

The channel maintained the map wouldn’t be changed ‘straightaway’, but they would ‘bear these thoughts in mind’ when place names were refreshed as they kept ‘a watching brief’.

Martin is encouraging others from Rutland to share their thoughts by contacting centralnews@itv.com

We asked ITV for a comment, but at the time of writing, they had not responded.